Whereas, the groups of Eritreans conducting their movement from inside Eritrea, were known as “Mahber Showate – 7- “, (the Organisation of the Seven – 7 - ), the other group of Eritreans, conducting the “Movement”, from Port-Sudan (The Sudan), defined it as “Al Rabita Al Islamia”, of which, to our knowledge, the history, the meaning and the legacy seem to have been lost with the time, at least, partly. Whether its religious connotation had something to do with its disappearance, it is left to the historians to fathom it out and prove. Those movements followed the previous ones and remained up to now are the ELF, which has the history of have eliminated the “Eritrean Liberation Movement (ELM) and the EPLF to have defeated the ELF.

These “dichotomies in nomenclature” of the Eritrean Revolution, to our view, were perhaps the reflections, not only of the political orientations, but also of culturo-linguistic and religious reasons, because of which the Arabic and the Tigrigngna languages, had been accepted, at that time, as the twin-national languages of Eritrea. Some discrepancies in their messages however are not to be completely ruled out, as the deeper meanings of those “dichotomies in nomenclature” could be speculated as depending on how their messages are portrayed by the two languages and how the native or non-native users of those two languages, had come to understand and receive them. It is the dichotomy of the two languages, of the meanings of their words and of the messages they send that kept and keeps the two organisations, the ELF and the EPLF, different. Speaking in linguistic terms, a word has a surface and a deeper and wider meaning. If we took and analysed those names and words in the three languages mentioned above, in English, we would simply understand that it was a “movement”, initiated to liberate Eritrea from the Ethiopian domination. In Tgrigngna, “ghedli”, is translated in English, not as “movement”, but as “struggle” and therefore the meaning is somehow detached from “movement” and carries a rather deeper and wider meaning than just conducting a simple movement. A “struggle” means and requires employing one's efforts and energies in trying to overcome an obstacle and achieve an aim. As far as our understanding goes, “Haraka”, in Arabic, is closer to “movement” than to “ghedli” (struggle); which, in Arabic is translated as “sewra”. The “dichotomies”, are therefore in the words and in the messages that the Arabic and the Tigrigngna languages do send to and are understood by the speakers and users of the two languages. Do notice that, our aim here, has only an analytical purpose of those “dichotomies in nomenclature” and therefore it has nothing discriminatory intended either to favour or disregard any of the two languages, or over/undervalue their semantics or their messages. The nomenclature itself of “ELF” and of “EPLF” is a dichotomy, with underlying differences, references and contradictions.

According to a historical research and analysis, made by Doctor Professor, Bereket Habte Selassie, “whereas ghedli”, as understood and conducted by the ELF's leadership meant, “an armed movement aimed at liberating the land from foreign occupation, -sewra - “, as understood, promoted and fought for by the EPLF's leardership, “included that, as well as internal changes in the society” This leads us into assuming that there had been and there still are also “conceptual dichotomies” in “ghedli/sewra” too. The EPLF, since becoming the PFDJ's regime of Ato Isaias Afwerki, in the independent Eritrea , has been constantly faithful to its concept of “sewra”, trying to bring about “internal changes in the society”. In other words, it has crossed over, from the “ghedli” times, principles and meanings to those of the “sewra” and to the practical actualisation of its principles. Though and no matter how hard and how forcefully it may have been trying to bring about those “internal changes in the society”, the PFDJ's regime has failed, not only in implementing its doctrines, but it has indeed created cleavages in the nations and in its ethnic and social diversities. The main reason, as we see it, lies on the PFDJ regime's arrogant ambition and method of arbitrarily and forcefully implement its own Eritrean-Tigrian ethnic, culturo-linguistic and traditional heritage and values and impose them upon those of the other different Eritrean ethnic and folk groups. The “ghedli/sewra” dichotomy has become counter-productive and is damaging the regime itself and its social, political and economic principles, though it may be either unconsciously or purposefully ignoring it. The greatest difficulties we have is, in failing to grasp what is it that it is motivating the majority of the Eritrean-Tigrian intellectuals, academicians, businessmen, law professors and doctors in every field, actively supporting the divisive politics of the PFDJ's regime. What is it that unites them all to stay fully behind and back-up a regime that is gradually killing the nation and its pluri-cultural society? We are not buying the opinion and the assertions of some of those Eritrean-Tigrian intellectuals, claiming that the PFDJ's regime is equally oppressing and maltreating all Eritrean ethnic-groups and their members, including the Eritrean-Tigrians too. We have more than often pointed out that the PFDJ's regime of Ato Isaias Afwerki is targeting and persecuting only those sections, political or religious groups and individual citizens of the Eritrean-Tigrians who either oppose its policies or do refuse to go along with its “tigrignisation” policy of the Eritrean society and of the Eritrean nation. We have not yet heard that the PFDJ of Ato Isaias Afwerki has launched an all-out war of “ethnic-cleansing” proportions, against any other ethnic-group, but only against the ethnic Kunama and this has a precedence. According to Ato Mengesteab Girmay, and ex-member of the PFDJ regime's intelligence security, who had first revealed the “mass-poisoning, mass-killing and burying in mass-graves of 26 Kunama prisoners”,

If this was what “sewra,internal changes in the society”, had meant for the EPLF's leadership, then the whole of its fighting-years were not for freedom, but first, for eliminating the Kunama race and “grabbing their land” and then, perhaps turning to and do the same to the other ethnic and folk-groups, inhabiting and forming the demographic diversity of the Eritrean western lowlands and eventually turn the whole of Eritrea, the single property of the Eritrean-Tigran people. The PFDJ's regime of Ato Isaias Afwerki has simply dislocated, some Eritrean-Tigrians populations from their native homelands and settled them in the fertile areas of the Kunama land, but it did not wage any war of “ethnic-cleansing” type against them, as it had done, it has been and is still doing against the Kunama people. Those claiming that the regime is oppressing us all, equally and with equal intensity, should first objectively look into the practical activities the regime is conducting against certain ethnic-groups, (Kunama, Afar and others), and then draw fair conclusions. At no times, in no places and in no ways, has the PFDJ's regime ever turned its wrath against the Eritrean-Tigrians as an ethnic-group. This would anyhow be aiming at its own self. The biggest irony is that the Eritrean-Tigrian intelligentsia does fully know and is also fully aware that Ato Isaias Afwerki and his few comrades today holding, in their hands, the political, the economic and the military powers in Eritrea are not Eritrean-Tigrians, but Ethiopian-Tigrians. Though they may have led the Eritrean “sewra”, they have never been the real “Tegadeltis”, (freedom-fighters), but only the leaders and commanders of the Eritrean forces, giving orders either only from their bunkers or from far away American, European and Asian countries.

In the last eighteen/nineteen (18/19) years, they have clearly demonstrated and shown us that they do not care much even of their own comrades whom they uncompromisingly detained, imprisoned and are letting them die slowly.

The only reason was that they had challenged their fellow-leadership members by calling for democratic principles be introduced in the country. For Ato Isaias Aferki and his close colleagues, that was not their “sewra” principle, but a deviation from it. This is another prove of dichotomies of views and of principles even within the EPLF/PFDJ regime leadership-members.

What has been and is keeping together those Eritrean and Ethiopian-Tigrian leaders together, deep down, is only their Tigrian ethnicity. This was true in the past as it is up to these days, where the Eritrean-Tigrians, though externally not very clearly showing, do associate, share with and accept, with much more sympathy, their Ethiopian-Tigrian ethnic-group's members, (even if they are called Isaias Afwerki, Hagos Gebrehiwet (Kasha), Yemane Gebremeskel and others), than their fellow-Eritreans like, Afar, Baria, Beni-Amer, Bilen, Hdareb, Kunama, Saho and Tigre. This is obviously natural, but intolerable when it has sinister aims of trying to “change a society”, which is multiple and different, into one and impose on it, the culture of a single ethnic-group (Tigrian).

There had also been the following dichotomies which played their part too:

1.- The “geographical dichotomies”, (highland/lowland).

Prior to the Eritrean Liberation Movements, not many highlanders, specifically the Eritrean-Tigrians, had ever ventured in the lowlands; partly due to their innate suspicious and contemptuous attitudes and partly because of their belief of having more in common to do with their fellow-Ethiopian-Tigrian Christians (and even with the Amara), in the south, than with the mostly Muslim and, to their prejudiced minds, infidels, primitive and demographically complex populations and communities of the western Eritrean lowlands.

2.- the “ethnic and religious dichotomies”, (unitary and ethno-religious Eritrean-Tigrian Christian community of the highland regions, versus the plural ethnic, religious and demographically diverse societies of the lowlands).

Due to their communal language, culture and cultural values, the highland Eritrean-Tigrian Christian communities have always lived in their three regions, where no other ethnicities ever concurred and tried to mingle with them.

The plural ethnic, religious and demographically diverse communities of the western and eastern Eritrean lowland populations lived together in towns, in major centres and even in villages in rural areas, sharing certain common interests as well as respecting each other's values, defending and preserving their own respective ethnic and cultural values and interests, but still peacefully living together. These have always been the prototypes of the Eritrean multi-ethnic and multi-culturo-linguistic society.

The EPLF's leadership, as it used to live totally isolated, already in the Sahel mountains, where it had been confined, due more to security reasons than out of choice, had developed a culture of its own, partly united by group's interests and principles and partly by their ethnic affinities. Moved into the cities in the independent Eritrea and, as the PFDJ's regime, it started putting into practice its “sewra” principles of “internal changes in the society”. Its final objective is to “change” and turn the Eritrean people and the Eritrean nation, into an entity of its own image and likeness. It had however grossly miscalculated and disregarded that the Eritrean people are ethnically, culturo-linguistically and traditionally diverse, with their own respective cultural heritages and values which they fiercely defend and therefore they are not to be “changed” so easily and so quickly. The PFDJ's regime of Ato Isaias Afwerki however, lacking of conceptual principles and of a wise judgement, is making recourse to the use of physical forces to try to impose and implement its doctrines. Due to its reclusive and uncontested life-style, during the Eritrean independent struggle, which was nothing else, but just the reflection of its own Eritrean-Tigrian society, had failed/refused to get to know the diverse cultures of the western Eritrean lowland populations, though living among them. Such dichotomy of a xenophobic type, compared with the trustfully and confidently living together, as members of a demographically diverse society of the lowland populations, has always characterised the EPLF's leadership and many of their ethnic-group's members, in the Eritrean battle-fields, in the Eritrean highland, lowland and in the Diaspora. There are therefore fundamental societal and contrasting dichotomies, between the Eritrean-Tigrian single ethnic component and the multiple ethnic and culturo-linguistic components of the Eritrean society. Those dichotomies are not being seriously tried to make them lose or at least reduce their contrasting qualities, but indeed increased at the hands of the PFDJ's regime of Ato Isaias Afwerki and of its and his mostly Eritrean-Tigrian support base. If the notion that Eritrea is a multi-nationalities' nation and which we all Eritreans hold and believe in, those who are practically sticking solely to their own ethnic group's interests, today monopolising the entire social, political, economic and military powers and are trying to turn Eritrea into a one ethnic-group's (Tigrians') nation, should be firstly the ones to open their horizon and see all other Eritrean ethnic-groups too as equally entitled, as equal partners and having equal rights to share those powers.

3.- In land matters, there are “dichotomies of interests, of aims and of objectives”; (sedentary, agricultural with mainly economic, industrial and commercial interests and aims in cash crops versus semi-sedentary farmers and pastoral communities, engaged mainly in the farming of staple crops and in animal husbandry and not very much interested in economic matters and in commercial agriculture,. The “land-grabbing” accusations that are today being launched, by a considerable number of individuals, mainly members of the populations of the Eritrean western lowlands, to the PFDJ's regime and to many of its supporters, are legitimate ones, as such activities are being undertaken, only in the Eritrean western lowlands; only by the regime and by its fellow-ethnic-members and interested only in the farming of cash crop, whereas none of the Eritrean western populations or ethnic-groups have ever ventured in the highland Kebesa regions, where fierce, violent and even cruel reactions would surely be displayed by the Eritrean-Tigrian populations.

4.- The “dichotomies of interests and of aims”, between the government, government officials, city-residents, living in towns, big centres: construction of residential homes, of streets, of roads, bridges, irrigation schemes, urban developments, versus the priorities of the rural populations, farmers, living in rural communities, living in smaller villages and hamlets, spread in wider areas, intent in protecting and preserving their crop-fields, graze-lands and the vegetation of their rural environs. The problems arise whenever those aims are not respected and interests conflict, with the government and urban dwellers forcefully implementing their plans and the villagers penalised and brutalised.

5.- In the Kunama Land , the “dichotomies of interests and of aims” between the Kunama people and the regional authorities, followed by the settlers, originating from all parts of Eritrea , are becoming worrisome. The Kunama people, as often stated, assign their entire land for a particular purpose thus proving that no chunks of land are left purposelessly and unused. Despite of that, and according to the present Eritrean PFDJ's regime and its experts in agriculture, the Kunama land had either been left idle for too long or had badly been utilised and therefore it had to be turned into “a mechanised agricultural land”. This greedy and aggressive view meant that neither the Kunama people's traditional distribution, ownership and administration systems and laws had to be respected nor even the basic interests of the Kunama rural populations of growing their staple food crops were to be given any consideration, but only the implementation of their projects, based on their only vision of the Kunama Land as the “bread basket of Eritrea” (provider of both staple and cash crops). Against such a fierce force, moved with such strongly determined projects, the Kunama rural population is left, not only totally powerless, but also forced and subjected to the lowest poverty level never experienced in its long history. The Kunama people's state today, under the present PFDJ's regime is not only demanding to struggle to protect and preserve the property rights of its own native and ancestral land, but primarily, to struggle to defend, protect and retain the very existence of its own race. The dichotomies of interests and aims, between the Kunama people and the present PFDJ's regime, their supporters and settlers, are totally different and contrasting and therefore requiring closer watch and concern as they have solely “ethnic-cleansing aims”, with the Eritrean-Tigrian populations being turned into the new “native” owners of the Kunama people's native and ancestral land. This is not the starting, but only the continuation phase of such plan, which has taken a developing trend at the present times; is very likely to set deep roots in the near-future and a final realisation in the long run.

Ato Mengsteab Girmai, one of the ex-members of the PFDJ regime's intelligence unit, who had defected months ago and revealed the regime's “mass-detention, mass-poisoning, mass-killing and burying in mass-grave”, of the Kunama prisoners, had very clearly and categorically stated: “bkedemu un mengsti ab lly izi hizbizi (Kunama) rasah hasab neruo”; (even previously, the government – PFDJ -, had nurtured dirty thoughts, upon this population – Kunama - . Needless to comment on, the existence of the Kunama people, as a race, in their native and ancestral land, has always been of a big obstacle to the PFDJ regime's territorial and economic developmental plans and therefore the conflicts of interests, between the Kunama people and the regime, deep down, lie in the Kunama people's struggle for the survival and existence of their race in their own native land and the regime's “land-grabbing; mechanized agricultural developments” and “food production”, plans, in the “Eritrean-bread basket”, (the Kunama land).

As far as the Kunama land was concerned, the very significance of the “Eritrean gedli”, as envisaged by the EPLF/PFDJ's regime, was, not only, to corroborate the Italian colonial principle of “Terreno demaniale” (Meriet mengsti), but to turn it into an ethnically neutral and demographically a common land, with the regime as the prime owner and the Eritrean-Tigrian populations as, culturo-linguistically and economically, the dominant force. Let the present times be of obvious evidence, where, in the population ration, in the Kunama land, the Eritrean-Tigrian ethnic-component, has greatly outnumbered the Baria, the Beni-Amer, the Kunama, and the Nara populations and other folk-groups, put together. Consequently, the dichotomies of cultures and of interests have resulted in an accommodative and forceful symbiosis, but sowing deep seeds of resentments, hatred and intolerance. No matter how thick and strong, a tense rope will eventually break. The regime is practically conducting a short-term politics, but planting long-term seeds of ethnic, cultures and economic contrasts and conflicts which will be extremely difficult to sedate and eradicate, if they are not faced at their present phase. In the long run, it is not conceivable that an entire race will remain idle and let be deprived of its own native and ancestral land and land property rights, be “ethnic-cleansed” or forced to abandon them, without sometime, grabbing any measures, only to regain and protect them. This is humanly conceivable.

It is only a question of time and of opportunities that sometimes, dichotomies become so intolerable that they turn into and do generate catastrophes.

The legacy of Hamid Idris Awate, to the Eritrean „Gedli“ (struggle), seen, experienced and analysed from the Kunama perspective The VKP/KAM: (September 30, 2009).

The plights of the Kunama people, at the present and in their recent and remote past history, can be divided into three parts, differing in times, but connected together by the occurrences of identical sequence of events, having identical aims. Those events differ in intensity, but not in quality and style.

1.- The period before Hamid Idris Awate, telling of the war waged by Ras Alula Abba Negga, of his ethnic-cleansing attempts and crimes against the Kunama race;

2.-Hamid Idris Awate's times, characterised by his untold crimes, against the Kunama people and his cattle-raiding activities and other injustices;

3.- the times after Hamid Idris Awate and the legacy he left behind, inherited and followed by the forces of the Eritrean “Gedli” (struggle): the ELF and the EPLF/PFDJ and their respective crimes against the Kunama people, protracting up to these very days.

About Ras Alula Abba Negga's times and of his ethnic-cleansing wars, against the Kunama people have not only been widely recorded, but also often retold by this web-site. It suffices to remind only that he too left an “ethnic-cleansing” legacy against the Kunama people, for reasons never understood at that time, not understood at the present times and is likely to be altogether forgotten in the future times. The theories and speculations about that “Ras'” activities go from the simple fact that he reacted to an alleged diversion of the tribute, collected from the Kunama and destined to him, but intercepted and robbed by some Kunama thieves, to the still simpler reason that Ras Alula Abba Negga had an innate hatred against the Kunama people and therefore had initiated and waged an “ethnic-cleansing” war against them, which is being continued up to these days. Whatever the reason, that legacy is alive.

Hamid Idris Awate was a person grown-up in the Kunama land and among the Kunama people, but, again, for reasons never understood, developed a strong hatred against the Kunama people and waged a fierce war, full of untold crimes against Kunama men, women and even male infants. Whereas Ras Alula Abba Negga was an alien to the Kunama peple and fought against them from afar and using alien forces, Hamid Idris Awate was a home-grown criminal, a local villain, who had restricted his crimes and activities, only within the Kunama land and only against the Kunama, using hoe-grown fellow-criminals. He had fallen into disgrace of the British Military Administration, not because of being the alleged beginner of the Eritrean Liberation Movement, as some quarters would like us Kunama to believe, but simply and solely because of his repetitive criminal activities, against the local populations and because of his continuous cattle-raiding and trading operations, in the Kunama land and in the neighbouring Tigray region. Unfortunately Hamid idris Awate's criminal and cattle-raiding legacies, in those localities, have been translated and given a positive and a legal significance, broaden wide and elevated to the national level. This is a clear perversion of principles and a straightforward piracy of the history of a local criminal individual upon which lay foundations of the history of the revolution of an entire population and of an entire nation, thus expecting those who had long known that individual and his crimes to start accepting him as their hero; turn his criminal legacy into a set of national pride, elevate him to the highest podium and glorify him as a national hero. History is full of examples of such individuals, whose crimes have been set aside, their vices turned into virtues and their legacy taken as guide, but with times, they returned and took their original criminal forms. A criminal legacy remains always tainted of its crimes and there is no means rubbing it off.

Jebha-Al-Tahrir, (ELF), as originally presented and made known to and experienced by the Kunama people, made the fatal mistake of propagating the distorted history of Hamid Idris Awate and defining itself as his follower.

Another, still greater fatal mistake the Jebha made, was to assign its most criminal unit to operate in the Kunama land and against the Kunama people. That unit, mostly made-up of and led by a joint group of Baria and Beni-Amer elements, had always nurtured retaliatory sentiments against the Kunama people, because of past history of conflicts and violence sustained by their ancestors, started indiscriminately killing Kunama prominent figures and ordinary individuals, set many Kunama villages ablaze, at times, with their inhabitants inside and raided numberless of the Kunama cattle. In short, that Jebha unit was carrying out and committing Hamid Idris Awate's identical crimes and causing more sufferings to the Kunama people.

Even without officially declaring and defining itself as Hamid Idris Awate's follower, that joint-group of individuals was practically proving itself with its daily actions, allowing and even tolerating its individual elements carrying out personal “vendettas”. As it had been reported by a Kunama ex-combatant in the Jebha forces, a Beni-Amer young man, unknowingly confessed to him, claiming that he had beheaded a Kunama woman, together with her infant, in retaliation of his father, killed by the Kunama people in the past. This was genuinely Hamid Idris Awate's example and legacy who was once reported that he had tossed a Kunama male infant in the air and chopped it into pieces, as it was falling down. Another story told by a Kunama, was that, as she was on her way to her crop-field, carrying her sleeping infant on her back, she was stopped by Hamid Idris Awate and his companion. He ordered the woman to lay her child on the ground and turned her back to it. As she was ordered to turn back again and face her child, she saw it lying beheaded. She fell fainted. Such are not made-up, but true stories, being provided and substantiated by many Kunama inhabitants of the Tika region and of the other neighbouring Kunama regions. The history of Hamid Idris Awate and of his criminal activities were well-known in the other Kunama regions and widely heard among many Kunama people too. It was following those killings, cattle-raiding and other criminal activities of that Jebha-Al-Tahrir's unit that the Kunama militia had decided to take up arms and defend themselves and their people. That decision was taken and interpreted by the Jebha's leaders as “siding with the Ethiopian government”, rather than analysing the criminal activities of their own units which had resulted in the decision of those Kunama militia. That false accusation did not stop there, but was also taken up by the EPLF's leadership too which, ever since, increased its hatred and retaliatory sentiments against the Kunama people and started its open “ethnic-cleansing” operations.

There are a lot of killings and other crimes, committed by the Jebha-Al-Tahrir leaders and their units, against the Kunama people in general, against their own combatants and alleged enemy spies, but these are not parts of this topic which is instead on the violent “legacy that Hamid Idris Awate” had transmitted and left behind to his followers and their subsequent groups. The leaders of Jebha-Al-Tahrir (ELF), however, have to assume responsibility of the whole of the killings and injustices committed by itself and by its units, against the Kunama people, starting in the 1960s and ending in the 1980s.

“Killing”, to our view, has been the “hallmark”, which has very negatively characterised the Eritrean “Gedli” (struggle), within the “Jebha-Al-Tahrir” (ELF) forces, as well in those of “Hizbawi-Gmbar's” (EPLF), freedom-fighting forces. That was not an accidental and an independently developed occurrence, but a legacy which has its deep roots in the history of Hamid Idris Awate himself. Those who, either ignorantly or knowingly, but loyal to their distorted history on Hamid Idris Awate's person, character and criminal activities, would like us Kunama to buy their version of history, should, once for all, understand that, since Hamid Idris Awate was a product grown locally, (in the Kunama land), and therefore its elements of growth as well its qualities are well-known, (to the Kunama people), should stop claiming to know more than those in whose land that given product has been produced. There is only the following statement of the Kunama people to pay attention to:

NO ONE KNOWS HAMID IDRIS AWATE MORE AND BETTER THAN THE KUNAMA PEOPLE OF THE KUNAMA TIKA REGION.

In the likes of “Jebha-Al-Tahrir” (ELF), “Hizbawi-Gmbar” (EPLF), too had fully inherited the criminal “legacy of Hamid Idris Awate”. The killing-sprays the EPLF's leaders are reported to have carried out, in the Eritrean battle-fields, against their own combatants and against many Eritrean citizens, are so numerous and so varied in their forms that they are said to equalised the deaths of those combatants, fallen at the hands of the enemy forces. We leave the details of such stories to be fathomed out and confirmed by true sources and by those knowing the “dark history of gedli”, who, we hope, will one day, be recounting every detail, as the sole eye-witnesses of the struggle times. Our scanty research-work leads us to the conclusion of the

“The Dark Face of Gedli& Its legacy

From Archive: The ELF and EPLF leaders' crimes” which stated that, “the crimes against innocent citizens did not begin in 2001 by the PFDJ, but has roots going back to the 1960s”.

Since its forced establishment in the independent Eritrea, however, the EPLF/PFDJ's regime has never forgotten its ill-grudges against the Kunama people and, in the like of its founder and prime criminal, Hamid Idris Awate, the regime, after gotten rid of all Kunama prominent individuals who had been its own members and faithfully served within its forces, (e.g. the late Mr. Mishsho Germano Nati, the late Mr. Hosea Dumam, the late Dr. Alexander Nati), appointed as governors of the Kunama land, hatred-loaded elements like Mustafa Nurhussein and his civil servants and military generals and their soldiers, who started the “ethnic-cleansing” operations against he Kunama people which have, ever since, been increasing in numbers and intensity. Indiscriminate detentions and imprisonment of Kunama men, women, under-aged children and young-mothers with their infants, false accusations of still siding with the Ethiopian government, as well as supporting the Democratic Movement for the Liberation of the Eritrean Kunama, (DMLEK), followed by mass-poisonings, mass-killings and burying in mass-graves of the Kunama ethnic-members, are the new methods the PFDJ's regime has developed, based on the very aim of Hamid Idris Awate's indiscriminate killings of the Kunama people. The PFDJ's regime of Ato Isaias Afwerki, has not only inherited Hamid Idris Awate's criminal legacy of “indiscriminately killing”, but it has also declared a full-fledged war against the Kunama people, against their race, against their native and ancestral land, against the very existence of the Kunama people as an ethnic entity. The most evident proof of that war is the continuous and forceful expropriation of their native and ancestral land, the only provider of their subsistence.

The Kunama people are being systematically forced to abandon their land and beat the road of refuge, thus making room to the “voluntary” and “forced land grabbers”. There is a growing claim, from the regime's quarters, supported even by some Eritrean-Tigrian intellectuals and political strategists, that all Eritrean people have the right, not only to choose to live wherever they like, in Eritrea, but also that they have an equal right to share the Eritrean land. Based on such theory, they are proposing that, due to the population density and territorial scarcity in the Eritrean highland (Kebesa) regions, some of those populations ought to be resettled in the vast and scarcely populated regions of the western Eritrean lowlands (in the lands of the Baria, of the Beni-Amer, of the Kunama and of the Nara populations).

In other words, they are fully behind of and openly supporting the PFDJ regime's present resettlement programs. This is not only an indirect, but a very tacit approval of the resettlement operations the regime is conducting, these days, in Eritrea . No wonder therefore, that not many Eritrean-Tigrian intellectuals are today, coming out either to comment on, criticise or condemn the regime's resettlement activities. Their silence can and is to be interpreted only as a tacit consent. Exempting few of them, the mainstream of the Eritrean-Tigrian intelligentsia is fully behind whatever politics the present PFDJ's regime comes up with and puts into practice.

The present resettlement programs, conjured out and conducted by the PFDJ's regime of Ato Isaias Afwerki, are very clear violations of the human and cultural rights of the “minorities”, promulgated by the “United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, (Adopted by General Assembly Resolution 61/295, on September 13, 2007)”, which states as follows:

1.- “Indigenous people have the right to the lands, territories and resources which they have traditionally owned, occupied or otherwise used or acquired.

2.- Indigenous peoples have the right to own, use, develop and control the lands, territories and resources they possess by reason of traditional ownership or other traditional occupation or use, as well as those which they have otherwise acquired.

3.- States shall give legal recognition and protection to these lands, territories and resources. Such recognition shall be conducted with due respect to the customs, traditions and land tenure systems of the indigenous peoples concerned”.

We Kunama therefore, wonder whether such quarters, individuals or groups of individuals, within and outside of the PFDJ regime's circles, do have a pinch of salt in their brains to think that Eritrea, in its present ethnic and culturo linguistic diversities and minorities, has not yet reached that level of the national territorial and economic identities which could accommodate such theories, claims and rights of communal ownership and usage of the Eritrean land. The Territorial identities of the Eritrean different nationalities are just as different and exclusive as their ethnicities, languages and cultures are. The Eritrean nationalities, including the Eritrean-Tigrians, who are in fact, well-known to be extremely and fiercely protective of their own land property rights, identify themselves fully with their own and respective native and ancestral homelands or regions. Surely, no one is contrary to and rejects the idea that all Eritrean citizens have the right to live wherever they like, but not either forcefully expropriating the native populations' lands or systematically ejecting them from their homes, villages and countrysides. At the present times, it is of very prominent importance and of utmost priority that the native populations are left to maintain and enjoy their native lands' exclusive property rights, for, infringing upon such traditionally and very eagerly protected rights, may mean a real launching of the Rwandan type of ethnic conflicts, hatred and violence. The land issue is also the ethnic-groups' issue and therefore it is just as sensitive as if an ethnic-group were to wage war against another ethnic.-group. The Kunama and the other Eritrean refugee populations of the western lowlands, still languishing in Ethiopia, in The Sudan and in other countries around the world, are longing to get back to Eritrea, one day, and reclaim their own respective native and ancestral lands' property rights. Who is going to deny them such rights? What if those resettled populations were to refuse to dislodge from those native homelands? Will therefore, ethnic conflicts likely to rise, as Ali Salim and others are fearing and warning us of? Serious questions!

Analysed from such a perspective, and as far as we Kunama people are concerned, the criminal legacy Hamid Idris Awate has bequeathed to the Eritrean “gedli”, in general and to “Jebha” and to “Hizbawi-Gmbar”, in particular, has crossed over, from killing us Kunama people, as individuals and as groups, to taking the “ethnic-cleansing” form and praxis of our race.

The whole significance of the Eritrean “gedli” and of its consequences are to and should be evaluated in the lights of the present Eritrean predicament.

Whereas, the groups of Eritreans conducting their movement from inside Eritrea, were known as “Mahber Showate – 7- “, (the Organisation of the Seven – 7 - ), the other group of Eritreans, conducting the “Movement”, from Port-Sudan (The Sudan), defined it as “Al Rabita Al Islamia”, of which, to our knowledge, the history, the meaning and the legacy seem to have been lost with the time, at least, partly. Whether its religious connotation had something to do with its disappearance, it is left to the historians to fathom it out and prove. Those movements followed the previous ones and remained up to now are the ELF, which has the history of have eliminated the “Eritrean Liberation Movement (ELM) and the EPLF to have defeated the ELF.

These “dichotomies in nomenclature” of the Eritrean Revolution, to our view, were perhaps the reflections, not only of the political orientations, but also of culturo-linguistic and religious reasons, because of which the Arabic and the Tigrigngna languages, had been accepted, at that time, as the twin-national languages of Eritrea. Some discrepancies in their messages however are not to be completely ruled out, as the deeper meanings of those “dichotomies in nomenclature” could be speculated as depending on how their messages are portrayed by the two languages and how the native or non-native users of those two languages, had come to understand and receive them. It is the dichotomy of the two languages, of the meanings of their words and of the messages they send that kept and keeps the two organisations, the ELF and the EPLF, different. Speaking in linguistic terms, a word has a surface and a deeper and wider meaning. If we took and analysed those names and words in the three languages mentioned above, in English, we would simply understand that it was a “movement”, initiated to liberate Eritrea from the Ethiopian domination. In Tgrigngna, “ghedli”, is translated in English, not as “movement”, but as “struggle” and therefore the meaning is somehow detached from “movement” and carries a rather deeper and wider meaning than just conducting a simple movement. A “struggle” means and requires employing one's efforts and energies in trying to overcome an obstacle and achieve an aim. As far as our understanding goes, “Haraka”, in Arabic, is closer to “movement” than to “ghedli” (struggle); which, in Arabic is translated as “sewra”. The “dichotomies”, are therefore in the words and in the messages that the Arabic and the Tigrigngna languages do send to and are understood by the speakers and users of the two languages. Do notice that, our aim here, has only an analytical purpose of those “dichotomies in nomenclature” and therefore it has nothing discriminatory intended either to favour or disregard any of the two languages, or over/undervalue their semantics or their messages. The nomenclature itself of “ELF” and of “EPLF” is a dichotomy, with underlying differences, references and contradictions.

According to a historical research and analysis, made by Doctor Professor, Bereket Habte Selassie, “whereas ghedli”, as understood and conducted by the ELF's leadership meant, “an armed movement aimed at liberating the land from foreign occupation, -sewra - “, as understood, promoted and fought for by the EPLF's leardership, “included that, as well as internal changes in the society” This leads us into assuming that there had been and there still are also “conceptual dichotomies” in “ghedli/sewra” too. The EPLF, since becoming the PFDJ's regime of Ato Isaias Afwerki, in the independent Eritrea , has been constantly faithful to its concept of “sewra”, trying to bring about “internal changes in the society”. In other words, it has crossed over, from the “ghedli” times, principles and meanings to those of the “sewra” and to the practical actualisation of its principles. Though and no matter how hard and how forcefully it may have been trying to bring about those “internal changes in the society”, the PFDJ's regime has failed, not only in implementing its doctrines, but it has indeed created cleavages in the nations and in its ethnic and social diversities. The main reason, as we see it, lies on the PFDJ regime's arrogant ambition and method of arbitrarily and forcefully implement its own Eritrean-Tigrian ethnic, culturo-linguistic and traditional heritage and values and impose them upon those of the other different Eritrean ethnic and folk groups. The “ghedli/sewra” dichotomy has become counter-productive and is damaging the regime itself and its social, political and economic principles, though it may be either unconsciously or purposefully ignoring it. The greatest difficulties we have is, in failing to grasp what is it that it is motivating the majority of the Eritrean-Tigrian intellectuals, academicians, businessmen, law professors and doctors in every field, actively supporting the divisive politics of the PFDJ's regime. What is it that unites them all to stay fully behind and back-up a regime that is gradually killing the nation and its pluri-cultural society? We are not buying the opinion and the assertions of some of those Eritrean-Tigrian intellectuals, claiming that the PFDJ's regime is equally oppressing and maltreating all Eritrean ethnic-groups and their members, including the Eritrean-Tigrians too. We have more than often pointed out that the PFDJ's regime of Ato Isaias Afwerki is targeting and persecuting only those sections, political or religious groups and individual citizens of the Eritrean-Tigrians who either oppose its policies or do refuse to go along with its “tigrignisation” policy of the Eritrean society and of the Eritrean nation. We have not yet heard that the PFDJ of Ato Isaias Afwerki has launched an all-out war of “ethnic-cleansing” proportions, against any other ethnic-group, but only against the ethnic Kunama and this has a precedence. According to Ato Mengesteab Girmay, and ex-member of the PFDJ regime's intelligence security, who had first revealed the “mass-poisoning, mass-killing and burying in mass-graves of 26 Kunama prisoners”,

If this was what “sewra,internal changes in the society”, had meant for the EPLF's leadership, then the whole of its fighting-years were not for freedom, but first, for eliminating the Kunama race and “grabbing their land” and then, perhaps turning to and do the same to the other ethnic and folk-groups, inhabiting and forming the demographic diversity of the Eritrean western lowlands and eventually turn the whole of Eritrea, the single property of the Eritrean-Tigran people. The PFDJ's regime of Ato Isaias Afwerki has simply dislocated, some Eritrean-Tigrians populations from their native homelands and settled them in the fertile areas of the Kunama land, but it did not wage any war of “ethnic-cleansing” type against them, as it had done, it has been and is still doing against the Kunama people. Those claiming that the regime is oppressing us all, equally and with equal intensity, should first objectively look into the practical activities the regime is conducting against certain ethnic-groups, (Kunama, Afar and others), and then draw fair conclusions. At no times, in no places and in no ways, has the PFDJ's regime ever turned its wrath against the Eritrean-Tigrians as an ethnic-group. This would anyhow be aiming at its own self. The biggest irony is that the Eritrean-Tigrian intelligentsia does fully know and is also fully aware that Ato Isaias Afwerki and his few comrades today holding, in their hands, the political, the economic and the military powers in Eritrea are not Eritrean-Tigrians, but Ethiopian-Tigrians. Though they may have led the Eritrean “sewra”, they have never been the real “Tegadeltis”, (freedom-fighters), but only the leaders and commanders of the Eritrean forces, giving orders either only from their bunkers or from far away American, European and Asian countries.

In the last eighteen/nineteen (18/19) years, they have clearly demonstrated and shown us that they do not care much even of their own comrades whom they uncompromisingly detained, imprisoned and are letting them die slowly.

The only reason was that they had challenged their fellow-leadership members by calling for democratic principles be introduced in the country. For Ato Isaias Aferki and his close colleagues, that was not their “sewra” principle, but a deviation from it. This is another prove of dichotomies of views and of principles even within the EPLF/PFDJ regime leadership-members.

What has been and is keeping together those Eritrean and Ethiopian-Tigrian leaders together, deep down, is only their Tigrian ethnicity. This was true in the past as it is up to these days, where the Eritrean-Tigrians, though externally not very clearly showing, do associate, share with and accept, with much more sympathy, their Ethiopian-Tigrian ethnic-group's members, (even if they are called Isaias Afwerki, Hagos Gebrehiwet (Kasha), Yemane Gebremeskel and others), than their fellow-Eritreans like, Afar, Baria, Beni-Amer, Bilen, Hdareb, Kunama, Saho and Tigre. This is obviously natural, but intolerable when it has sinister aims of trying to “change a society”, which is multiple and different, into one and impose on it, the culture of a single ethnic-group (Tigrian).

There had also been the following dichotomies which played their part too:

1.- The “geographical dichotomies”, (highland/lowland).

Prior to the Eritrean Liberation Movements, not many highlanders, specifically the Eritrean-Tigrians, had ever ventured in the lowlands; partly due to their innate suspicious and contemptuous attitudes and partly because of their belief of having more in common to do with their fellow-Ethiopian-Tigrian Christians (and even with the Amara), in the south, than with the mostly Muslim and, to their prejudiced minds, infidels, primitive and demographically complex populations and communities of the western Eritrean lowlands.

2.- the “ethnic and religious dichotomies”, (unitary and ethno-religious Eritrean-Tigrian Christian community of the highland regions, versus the plural ethnic, religious and demographically diverse societies of the lowlands).

Due to their communal language, culture and cultural values, the highland Eritrean-Tigrian Christian communities have always lived in their three regions, where no other ethnicities ever concurred and tried to mingle with them.

The plural ethnic, religious and demographically diverse communities of the western and eastern Eritrean lowland populations lived together in towns, in major centres and even in villages in rural areas, sharing certain common interests as well as respecting each other's values, defending and preserving their own respective ethnic and cultural values and interests, but still peacefully living together. These have always been the prototypes of the Eritrean multi-ethnic and multi-culturo-linguistic society.

The EPLF's leadership, as it used to live totally isolated, already in the Sahel mountains, where it had been confined, due more to security reasons than out of choice, had developed a culture of its own, partly united by group's interests and principles and partly by their ethnic affinities. Moved into the cities in the independent Eritrea and, as the PFDJ's regime, it started putting into practice its “sewra” principles of “internal changes in the society”. Its final objective is to “change” and turn the Eritrean people and the Eritrean nation, into an entity of its own image and likeness. It had however grossly miscalculated and disregarded that the Eritrean people are ethnically, culturo-linguistically and traditionally diverse, with their own respective cultural heritages and values which they fiercely defend and therefore they are not to be “changed” so easily and so quickly. The PFDJ's regime of Ato Isaias Afwerki however, lacking of conceptual principles and of a wise judgement, is making recourse to the use of physical forces to try to impose and implement its doctrines. Due to its reclusive and uncontested life-style, during the Eritrean independent struggle, which was nothing else, but just the reflection of its own Eritrean-Tigrian society, had failed/refused to get to know the diverse cultures of the western Eritrean lowland populations, though living among them. Such dichotomy of a xenophobic type, compared with the trustfully and confidently living together, as members of a demographically diverse society of the lowland populations, has always characterised the EPLF's leadership and many of their ethnic-group's members, in the Eritrean battle-fields, in the Eritrean highland, lowland and in the Diaspora. There are therefore fundamental societal and contrasting dichotomies, between the Eritrean-Tigrian single ethnic component and the multiple ethnic and culturo-linguistic components of the Eritrean society. Those dichotomies are not being seriously tried to make them lose or at least reduce their contrasting qualities, but indeed increased at the hands of the PFDJ's regime of Ato Isaias Afwerki and of its and his mostly Eritrean-Tigrian support base. If the notion that Eritrea is a multi-nationalities' nation and which we all Eritreans hold and believe in, those who are practically sticking solely to their own ethnic group's interests, today monopolising the entire social, political, economic and military powers and are trying to turn Eritrea into a one ethnic-group's (Tigrians') nation, should be firstly the ones to open their horizon and see all other Eritrean ethnic-groups too as equally entitled, as equal partners and having equal rights to share those powers.

3.- In land matters, there are “dichotomies of interests, of aims and of objectives”; (sedentary, agricultural with mainly economic, industrial and commercial interests and aims in cash crops versus semi-sedentary farmers and pastoral communities, engaged mainly in the farming of staple crops and in animal husbandry and not very much interested in economic matters and in commercial agriculture,. The “land-grabbing” accusations that are today being launched, by a considerable number of individuals, mainly members of the populations of the Eritrean western lowlands, to the PFDJ's regime and to many of its supporters, are legitimate ones, as such activities are being undertaken, only in the Eritrean western lowlands; only by the regime and by its fellow-ethnic-members and interested only in the farming of cash crop, whereas none of the Eritrean western populations or ethnic-groups have ever ventured in the highland Kebesa regions, where fierce, violent and even cruel reactions would surely be displayed by the Eritrean-Tigrian populations.

4.- The “dichotomies of interests and of aims”, between the government, government officials, city-residents, living in towns, big centres: construction of residential homes, of streets, of roads, bridges, irrigation schemes, urban developments, versus the priorities of the rural populations, farmers, living in rural communities, living in smaller villages and hamlets, spread in wider areas, intent in protecting and preserving their crop-fields, graze-lands and the vegetation of their rural environs. The problems arise whenever those aims are not respected and interests conflict, with the government and urban dwellers forcefully implementing their plans and the villagers penalised and brutalised.

5.- In the Kunama Land , the “dichotomies of interests and of aims” between the Kunama people and the regional authorities, followed by the settlers, originating from all parts of Eritrea , are becoming worrisome. The Kunama people, as often stated, assign their entire land for a particular purpose thus proving that no chunks of land are left purposelessly and unused. Despite of that, and according to the present Eritrean PFDJ's regime and its experts in agriculture, the Kunama land had either been left idle for too long or had badly been utilised and therefore it had to be turned into “a mechanised agricultural land”. This greedy and aggressive view meant that neither the Kunama people's traditional distribution, ownership and administration systems and laws had to be respected nor even the basic interests of the Kunama rural populations of growing their staple food crops were to be given any consideration, but only the implementation of their projects, based on their only vision of the Kunama Land as the “bread basket of Eritrea” (provider of both staple and cash crops). Against such a fierce force, moved with such strongly determined projects, the Kunama rural population is left, not only totally powerless, but also forced and subjected to the lowest poverty level never experienced in its long history. The Kunama people's state today, under the present PFDJ's regime is not only demanding to struggle to protect and preserve the property rights of its own native and ancestral land, but primarily, to struggle to defend, protect and retain the very existence of its own race. The dichotomies of interests and aims, between the Kunama people and the present PFDJ's regime, their supporters and settlers, are totally different and contrasting and therefore requiring closer watch and concern as they have solely “ethnic-cleansing aims”, with the Eritrean-Tigrian populations being turned into the new “native” owners of the Kunama people's native and ancestral land. This is not the starting, but only the continuation phase of such plan, which has taken a developing trend at the present times; is very likely to set deep roots in the near-future and a final realisation in the long run.

Ato Mengsteab Girmai, one of the ex-members of the PFDJ regime's intelligence unit, who had defected months ago and revealed the regime's “mass-detention, mass-poisoning, mass-killing and burying in mass-grave”, of the Kunama prisoners, had very clearly and categorically stated: “bkedemu un mengsti ab lly izi hizbizi (Kunama) rasah hasab neruo”; (even previously, the government – PFDJ -, had nurtured dirty thoughts, upon this population – Kunama - . Needless to comment on, the existence of the Kunama people, as a race, in their native and ancestral land, has always been of a big obstacle to the PFDJ regime's territorial and economic developmental plans and therefore the conflicts of interests, between the Kunama people and the regime, deep down, lie in the Kunama people's struggle for the survival and existence of their race in their own native land and the regime's “land-grabbing; mechanized agricultural developments” and “food production”, plans, in the “Eritrean-bread basket”, (the Kunama land).

As far as the Kunama land was concerned, the very significance of the “Eritrean gedli”, as envisaged by the EPLF/PFDJ's regime, was, not only, to corroborate the Italian colonial principle of “Terreno demaniale” (Meriet mengsti), but to turn it into an ethnically neutral and demographically a common land, with the regime as the prime owner and the Eritrean-Tigrian populations as, culturo-linguistically and economically, the dominant force. Let the present times be of obvious evidence, where, in the population ration, in the Kunama land, the Eritrean-Tigrian ethnic-component, has greatly outnumbered the Baria, the Beni-Amer, the Kunama, and the Nara populations and other folk-groups, put together. Consequently, the dichotomies of cultures and of interests have resulted in an accommodative and forceful symbiosis, but sowing deep seeds of resentments, hatred and intolerance. No matter how thick and strong, a tense rope will eventually break. The regime is practically conducting a short-term politics, but planting long-term seeds of ethnic, cultures and economic contrasts and conflicts which will be extremely difficult to sedate and eradicate, if they are not faced at their present phase. In the long run, it is not conceivable that an entire race will remain idle and let be deprived of its own native and ancestral land and land property rights, be “ethnic-cleansed” or forced to abandon them, without sometime, grabbing any measures, only to regain and protect them. This is humanly conceivable.

It is only a question of time and of opportunities that sometimes, dichotomies become so intolerable that they turn into and do generate catastrophes.

The VKP/KAM: (October10, 2009).

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